Industry News

Big Data: personalised targeting is the future… but don’t be creepy

Imagine you’re walking through a store. You’ve installed the retailer’s app on your smartphone, and it recognises it has just arrived at its brick-and-mortar…

Tencent approaches Facebook valuation following search engine merger

Yesterday evening, Tencent revealed it’ll take a 36.5% slice of search engine rival Sogou for US$448-million. The deal should boost both Sogou and Tencent’s…

Should Microsoft kill SharePoint? [Gartner]

Apparently SharePoint is on its way out and Microsoft should probably start thinking about doing away with it. This is according to Gartner analyst…

Microsoft gives Bing a makeover, introduces contextual search

Microsoft seems pretty determined to make Bing work for it. The Redmond-based giant has given the search engine a makeover, including a new logo…

3 big technologies every business needs to pay attention to [Gartner]

Every business is a technology business. No matter what field you’re in, tech can help you become faster, more agile and increasingly productive. That’s…

The Nexus of Forces: more business focus, less tech [Gartner]

The Nexus of Forces has been a huge focus for research house Gartner for the last two years. The Nexus, which comprises of the…

Rinse, repeat. Google Street View car crashes into bus, flees, crashes again

Google has been mapping out the world’s roads for drivers to enjoy everywhere for years now. However, not too many people have seen the…

24.com & Yahoo!

I wandered over to Yahoo! for the first time in a long time and was struck by the similarity of the site with our…

Newspapers RIP? Not really.

Duncan Mcleod from the Financial Mail wrote this doom ‘n gloom piece on the end of newspapers. It’s actually one of the better pieces…

Moneyweb relaunch

One of my favourite websites, Moneyweb, has relaunched, featuring a wide-format design. Their site used to be run by iafrica.com, who lost the contract…

SA's online newspapers set to grow

Francois Nel from the For the Media blog pointed me towards his blog recently (pretty good, I must say). This post in particular caught…

Online media is the new black

I’ve been at Mail & Guardian for a long time now, five years and counting, flying the online flag. Am blogging from our 2007…

Website consumption patterns are changing. Remember when the main way to surf a website was via its homepage? Well, that was the old days. The rise of super-fast, super-efficient search engines mean that users are increasingly accessing websites via deep links that bypass their homepages directly to a website’s articles. It’s essentially a backdoor into your website. Search engines aren’t the only ones to blame. Bloggers generally link directly to the articles they are writing about, ignoring homepages. RSS feeds, which allow users to subscribe directly to article feeds, are also responsible for the decline of the homepage. So what does this mean? Paradoxically it is both a problem and an opportunity for publishers.

Where are the great online magazines? Where?

Magazines have not enjoyed the same high profile, runaway success of their newspaper counterparts in the online world. Magazines aren’t big online. Websites of print magazines have had a rather low profile in more than 10 years of internet in this country. Compare this to the high-profile online news brands that rake in big numbers and you will see what I mean. It’s no secret that the news brands dominate the top half of the local online readership rankings, whereas very few magazines even make the top 50 sites….

Bloggers can now enter major journalism award

Just noticed that the Telkom ICT Journalist of the year award now has a “Citizen Journalist” category, accepting entries from blogs or personal websites….

Online ‘permanence’

Imagine a world where you could actively sell advertising on archived content. Well, it’s here. Content on a website should never die. Never, ever. To delete content on a website is a waste. Online articles and their links should be permanent. In the world of the dead tree, articles have limited lifespans. You read your paper, then it’s used to wrap fish and chips, is thrown in the rubbish bin, or lives a lonely life of obscurity in some dusty library archive….

It’s about branding, stupid

Online advertising is not only about clicks, leads and acquisitions… branding is important too. There are a number of competing online advertising models on the net. By far the most dominant one used by online publishers is the Cost-per-Thousand (CPM) model. CPM is the closest online advertising gets to advertising in traditional media. The advertiser pays in advance to place an advert that will be displayed to the website’s readership base, which should generate return on investment. Through the campaign there will be branding for the advertiser, click-throughs on the advert, leads and hopefully acquisition of the product. Everyone’s happy?

Battle of the business sites

Websites that report on financial news and information were always going to crack it online. The web is the perfect medium for delivering up-to-the-minute financial news and data. Moreover, the LSM of the average business news reader matches that of the online reader: Both are high. The five biggest consumer-focused business sites, reporting on general financial news in South Africa, are engaged in a tussle to capture a bigger share of this lucrative reader and advertising market….

Bitcoin Surges As Market Relief Rally Meets Trump’s Crypto Backing

Insider Threats Surge In South African Organisations As AI Expands Cyber Risk

Anthropic Refuses To Let AI Spy On Customers

Innovate47 Launches Global Food & Agri Accelerator to Back Climate-Smart Startups

Simbi Wabote’s 10-Year Roadmap: How Nigeria Achieved 54% Local Content Growth

Records Tumble In Best Year Yet For South Africa’s Hedge Fund Industry

OPPO Reno15 Series Lands In South Africa With Big Cameras And Bigger Battery Ambitions

OPPO Reno15 Series Brings Flagship-Level Hardware Logic to the Mid-Tier in South Africa

HONOR’s customer first strategy is reshaping South Africa’s smartphone market

Omoda C5 X review

TDK enhances IMUs for extreme temps

Data centres and defence are reviving diesel